Color Photography: 5 photo editing tools that will save any image

Best photo editing tools for adjusting color – Levels

By default, the Levels dialog displays the combined RGB values of the pixels in the image, but you can open the menu at the top to view and edit the red, green and blue color channels independently.

This explains the difference between applying Auto Contrast and Auto Levels. Auto Contrast maximises the tonal range without altering the ratios of the three color channels.

After

Auto Levels optimises the channels individually, which can correct color casts, or introduce color casts where you didn’t have any!

Our original shot has a strong yellow cast because we used a colored graduated filter over the sky. Simply applying Auto Levels restores a much more natural color balance.

Extreme

In the final version, though, we’ve gone further by moving the red channel’s midtone slider to the left to make the colors redder, then gone back to editing all three RGB channels and moved the midtone slider to the right to darken the image.